Imtiaz Dharker

Purdah I
One day they said she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.
Purdah is a kind of safety.
The body finds a place to hide.
The cloth fans out against the skin
much like the earth falls
on coffins after they put the dead men in.
People she has known
stand up, sit down as they have always done.
But they make different angles
in the light, their eyes aslant,
a little sly.
She half-remembers things
from someone else's life,
Perhaps from yours, or mine -
carefully carrying what we do not own:
between the thighs, a sense of sin.
We sit still, letting the cloth grow
a little closer to our skin.
A light filters inward
through our bodies' walls.
Voices speak inside us,
echoing in the spaces we have just left.
She stands outside herself,
sometimes in all four corners of a room.
Wherever she goes, she is always
inching past herself,
as if she were a clod of earth
and the roots as well,
scratching for a hold
between the first and second rib.
Passing constantly out of her own hands
into the corner of someone else's eyes…
while doors keep opening
inward and again
inward.
Purdah II
The call breaks its back
across the tenements: ‘Allah-u-Akbar'.
Your mind throws black shadows
on marble cooled by centuries of dead.
A familiar script racks the walls.
The pages of the Koran
turn, smooth as old bones
in your prodigal hands.
In the tin box of your memory
a coin of comfort rattles
against the strangeness of a foreign land.
* * *
Years of sun were concentrated
into Maulvi's fat dark finger
hustling across the page,
nudging words into your head;
words unsoiled by sense,
pure rhythm on the tongue.
The body, rocked in time
with twenty others, was lulled
into thinking it had found a home.
* * *
The new Hajji, just fifteen,
had cheeks quite pink with knowledge
and eyes a startling blue.
He snapped a flower off his garland
and looked to you.
There was nothing holy in his look.
Hands that had prayed at Mecca
dropped a sly flower on your book.
You had been chosen.
Your dreams were full of him for days.
Making pilgrimages to his cheeks,
You were scorched,
long before the judgement,
by the blaze.
Your breasts, still tiny, grew an inch.
The cracked voice calls again.
A change of place and time.
Much of the colour drains away.
The brightest shades are in your dreams,
A picture-book, a strip of film.
The rest forget to sing.
Evelyn, the medium from Brighton,
said, ‘I see you quite different in my head,
not dressed in this cold blue.
I see your mother bringing you
a stretch of brilliant fabric, red.
Yes, crimson red, patterned through
with golden thread.'
There she goes, your mother,
still plotting at your wedding
long after she is dead.
* * *
They have all been sold and bought,
the girls I knew,
unwilling virgins who had been taught,
especially in this strangers' land, to bind
their brightness tightly round,
whatever they might wear,
in the purdah of the mind.
They veiled their eyes
with heavy lids.
They hid their breasts,
but not the fullness of their lips.
* * *
The men you knew
were in your history, striding proud
with heavy feet across a fertile land.
A horde of dead men
held up your head,
above the mean temptations
of those alien hands.
You answered to your race.
Night after virtuous night
you performed for them.
They warmed your bed.
* * *
A coin of comfort in the mosque
clatters down the years of loss
* * *
You never met those men
with burnt-out eyes, blood
dripping from their beards.
You remember the sun
pouring out of Maulvi's hands.
It was to save the child
the lamb was sacrificed;
to save the man,
the scourge and stones. God was justice.
Justice could be dread.
But woman. Woman,
you have learnt
that when God comes
you hide your head.
* * *
There are so many of me.
I have met them, meet them every day,
recognise their shadows on the streets.
I know their past and future
in cautious way they place their feet.
I can see behind their veils,
and before they speak
I know their tongues, thick
with the burr of Birmingham
or Leeds.
* * *
Break cover.
Break cover and let the girls with tell-tale lips.
We'll blindfold the spies. Tell me
what you did when the new moon
sliced you out of purdah,
your body shimmering through the lies.
* * *
Saleema of the swan neck
and tragic eyes, knew from films
that the heroine was always pure,
untouched; nevertheless
poured out her breasts to fill the cup
of his white hands
(the mad old artist with the pigeon chest)
and marveled at her own strange wickedness.
* * *
Bought and sold, and worse,
grown old. She married back home,
as good girls do,
in a flurry of red the cousin -
hers or mine, I cannot know -
had annual babies, then rebelled at last.
At last a sign, behind the veil,
of life;
found another man, became another wife,
and sank into the mould
of her mother's flesh
and mind, begging approval from the rest.
Her neck is bowed as if she wears a hood.
Eyes still tragic, when you meet her
on the high street,
and watchful as any creature
that lifts its head and sniffs the air
only to scent its own small trail of blood.
* * *
Naseem, you ran away
and your mother burned with shame.
Whatever we did,
the trail was the same:
the tear-stained mother, the gossip aunts
looking for shoots to smother
inside all our cracks.
The table is laden
and you are remembered
among the dead. No going back.
The prayer's said.
And there you are with your English boy
who was going to set you free,
trying to smile and be accepted,
always on your knees.
* * *
There you are, I can see you all now
in the tenements up north.
In or out of purdah. Tied, or bound.
Shaking your box to hear
how freedom rattles…
one coin, one sound.
...

The place is full of worshippers.
You can tell by the sandals
piled outside, the owners' prints
worn into leather, rubber, plastic,
a picture clearer than their faces
put together, with some originality,
brows and eyes, the slant
of cheek to chin.
What prayer are they whispering?
Each one has left a mark,
the perfect pattern of a need,
sole and heel and toe
in dark, curved patches,
heels worn down,
thongs ragged, mended many times.
So many shuffling hopes,
pounded into print,
as clear as the pages of holy books,
illuminated with the glint
of gold around the lettering.
What are they whispering?
Outside, in the sun,
such a quiet crowd
of shoes, thrown together
like a thousand prayers
washing against the walls of God.
...

Paper that lets the light
shine through, this
is what could alter things.
Paper thinned by age or touching,
the kind you find in well-used books,
the back of the Koran, where a hand
has written in the names and histories,
who was born to whom,
the height and weight, who
died where and how, on which sepia date,
pages smoothed and stroked and turned
transparent with attention.
If buildings were paper, I might
feel their drift, see how easily
they fall away on a sigh, a shift
in the direction of the wind.
Maps too. The sun shines through
their borderlines, the marks
that rivers make, roads,
railtracks, mountainfolds,
Fine slips from grocery shops
that say how much was sold
and what was paid by credit card
might fly our lives like paper kites.
An architect could use all this,
place layer over layer, luminous
script over numbers over line,
and never wish to build again with brick
or block, but let the daylight break
through capitals and monoliths,
through the shapes that pride can make,
find a way to trace a grand design
with living tissue, raise a structure
never meant to last,
of paper smoothed and stroked
and thinned to be transparent,
turned into your skin.
...

When I can't comprehend
why they're burning books
or slashing paintings,
...

The school-bell is a call to battle,
every step to class, a step into the firing-line.
Here is the target, fine skin at the temple,
cheek still rounded from being fifteen.

Surrendered, surrounded, she
takes the bullet in the head

and walks on. The missile cuts
a pathway in her mind, to an orchard
in full bloom, a field humming under the sun,
its lap open and full of poppies.

This girl has won
the right to be ordinary,

wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails,
go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid.
You have failed. You cannot kill a book
or the buzzing in it.

A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one,
the schoolgirls are standing up
to take their places on the front line.
...

i
I may raise my child in this man's house
or that man's love,
warm her on this one's smile, wean
her to that one's wit,
praise or blame at a chosen moment,
in a considered way, say
yes or no, true, false, tomorrow
not today. . .
finally, who will she be
when the choices are made,
when the choosers are dead,
and of the men I love, the teeth are left
chattering with me underground?
just the sum of me
and this or that
other?
Who can she be but, helplessly,
herself?
ii
Some day your head won't find my lap
so easily. Trust is a habit you'll soon break.
Once, stroking a kitten's head
through a haze of fur, I was afraid
of my own hand big and strong and quivering
with the urge to crush.
Here, in the neck's strong curve, the cradling arm,
love leers close to violence.
Your head too fragile, child,
under a mist of hair.
Home is this space in my lap, till the body reforms,
tissues stretch, flesh turns firm.
your kitten-bones will harden,
grow away from me, till you and I are sure
we are both safe.
iii
I spent years hiding from your face,
the weight of your arms, warmth
of your breath. Through feverish nights,
dreaming of you, the watchdogs of virtue
and obedience crouched on my chest. ‘Shake
them off,' I told myself, and did. Wallowed
in small perversities, celebrated as they came
of age, matured to sins.
I call this freedom now,
watch the word cavort luxuriously, strut
my independence across whole continents
of sheets. But turning from the grasp
of arms, the rasp of breath,
to look through darkened windows at the night,
Mother, I find you staring back at me.
When did my body agree
to wear your face?
...

The egg may be
about to hatch
thresholds, windows, floors,
shutters, tiles, a room,
A tulsi plant in a Dalda tin,
mirchi and lemon over the door
to protect the children
fathers mothers brothers two-in-ones.
Stacked one upon the other,
back to back,
tacked on sideways. A place
not private, though it pretends
to walls and bolts;
but battered, cracked
so all the lives show through
the boards and beams
that might as well
be paper, glass.

At last. The promise
of the imperfect shell.
...

This music will not sit in straight lines.
The notes refuse to perch on wires

but move in rhythm with the dancer
round the face of the clock,
through the dandelion head of time.

We feel blown free, but circle back
to be in love, to touch and part
and meet again, spun

past the face of the moon, the precise
underpinning of stars. The cycle begins
with one and ends with one,

dha dhin dhin dha. There must be
other feet in step with us, an underbeat,
a voice that keeps count, not yours or mine.

This music is playing us.
We are playing with time.
...

If I were a house
shored up like this
with ancient scaffolding
the threat of bars for windows,
damp roof and door of tin,

would you take the time
to walk into my face,
to move from room to room
and find the quiet space
where I begin?

Would you be tempted
to come in?
...

This music will not sit in straight lines.
The notes refuse to perch on wires

but move in rhythm with the dancer
round the face of the clock,
through the dandelion head of time.

We feel blown free, but circle back
to be in love, to touch and part
and meet again, spun

past the face of the moon, the precise
underpinning of stars. The cycle begins
with one and ends with one,

dha dhin dhin dha. There must be
other feet in step with us, an underbeat,
a voice that keeps count, not yours or mine.

This music is playing us.
We are playing with time.
...

Outside the door,
lurking in the shadows,
is a terrorist.
Is that the wrong description?
Outside that door,
taking shelter in the shadows,
is a freedom fighter.
I haven't got this right .
Outside, waiting in the shadows,
is a hostile militant.
Are words no more
than waving, wavering flags?
Outside your door,
watchful in the shadows,
is a guerrilla warrior.
God help me.
Outside, defying every shadow,
stands a martyr.
I saw his face.
No words can help me now.
Just outside the door,
lost in shadows,
is a child who looks like mine.
One word for you.
Outside my door,
his hand too steady,
his eyes too hard
is a boy who looks like your son, too.
I open the door.
Come in, I say.
Come in and eat with us.
The child steps in
and carefully, at my door,
takes off his shoes.
...

Diese Musik sitzt nicht auf geraden Linien.
Die Noten hocken niemals auf Drähten,

wollen wiegen im Rhythmus der Tänzer,
rund herum um das Antlitz einer Uhr,
durch den Pusteblumenschopf der Zeit.

So sind wir fortgetragen, frei, und kreisen doch
zurück, zu lieben, zu berühren, trennen
und treffen uns, wirbeln

vorbei am Gesicht des Mondes, dem präzisen
Unterbau der Sterne. Der Zyklus beginnt
mit Eins und endet auf Eins,

dha dhin dhin dha... Als wäre da ein anderer
Schritt, der unseren hält, ein untergründiger Takt,
eine Stimme, die abzählt, nicht deine oder meine.

Diese Musik spielt uns.
Wir spielen mit der Zeit.

aus dem Englischen von Uljana Wolf
...

That tongue of yours is silver when you speak
and silver when the speaking's done.
Those eyes have a look that turns my quick
to silver and proves my body's not my own
but away on loan to your fingers, bold
in their skilful wheeling and their dealing.
Your mouth the alchemist, I am gold,
blown through the eggshell of the ceiling
into a clear murano sky.
All that goes with me is the scent of you
which could be the scent of me, for there is no I
or you, flung as we are to glassy blue.
See how well I am undone
with one touch of your silenced silver tongue
...

I would have taken you to the Naz Café
if it had not shut down.
I would have taken you to the Naz Café
for the best view and the worst food in town.

We would have drunk flat beer and cream soda
and sweated on plastic chairs at the Naz Café.
We would have looked down over the dusty trees
at cars creeping along Marine Drive, round the bay
to Eros Cinema and the Talk of the Town.

We would have held hands in the Naz Café
over sticky rings on the table-top,
knee locked on knee at the Naz Café,
while we admired the distant Stock Exchange,
Taj Mahal Hotel, Sassoon Dock, Gateway.

We would have nursed a drink at the Naz Café
and you would have stolen a kiss from me.
We would have lingered in the Naz Cafe
till the day slid off the map into the Arabian sea.

I would have taken you to Bombay
if its name had not slid into the sea.
I would have taken you to the place called Bombay
if it were still there and if you were still here,
I would have taken you to the Naz café.
...

Ich hätte dich mitgenommen ins Naz Café,
doch hat es längst schon zugemacht.
Ich hätte dich mitgenommen ins Naz Café
für den besten Blick und das schlechteste Essen der Stadt.

Wir hätten Cream Soda und schales Bier getrunken
und geschwitzt auf den Plastikstühlen im Naz Café.
Wir hätten hinunter auf staubige Bäume geblickt,
auf kriechende Autos am Marine Drive, über die Bucht
zum Eros Kino und Talk of the Town.

Wir hätten Hände gehalten im Naz Café
auf der Tischplatte, über klebrigen Ringen,
Knie an Knie geschmiegt im Naz Café,
den fernen Stock Exchange bestaunt,
Taj Mahal Hotel, Sassoon Dock, Gateway.

Wir hätten Drinks genossen im Naz Café
und du hättest mich heimlich geküsst.
Wir hätten lange gesessen im Naz Café,
bis der Tag von der Karte glitt, ins Arabische Meer.

Ich hätte dich mitgenommen nach Bombay,
wär sein Name nicht ins Meer geglitten.
Ich hätte dir den Ort gezeigt, der Bombay hieß,
wenn es ihn noch gäbe, und wenn du noch da wärst,
hätte ich dich mitgenommen ins Naz Café.

aus dem Englischen von Uljana Wolf
...

Wär ich ein Haus,
gestützt wie dieses
durch uraltes Gerüst,
das Fenster eine Gitterdrohung,
feuchtes Dach und Tür aus Blech,

würdest du innehalten,
durch mein Gesicht treten,
von Raum zu Raum gehen
und den ruhigen Ort finden
an dem ich beginne?

Wärst du versucht,
hineinzukommen?

aus dem Englischen von Uljana Wolf
...

There are just not enough
straight lines. That
is the problem.
Nothing is flat
or parallel. Beams
balance crookedly on supports
thrust off the vertical.
Nails clutch at open seams.
The whole structure leans dangerously
towards the miraculous.

Into this rough frame,
someone has squeezed
a living space

and even dared to place
these eggs in a wire basket,
fragile curves of white
hung out over the dark edge
of a slanted universe,
gathering the light
into themselves,
as if they were
the bright, thin walls of faith.
...

Es gibt einfach nicht genug
gerade Linien. Das
ist das Problem.
Nichts ist flach
oder parallel. Balken
hangeln schräg auf Stützen,
die aus Vertikalen ragen.
Nägel klammern sich an offene Spalte.
Die ganze Struktur kippelt gefährlich
Richtung Wunder.

In diesen rauen Rahmen
zwängte jemand
seinen Lebensort

und traute sich sogar, diese Eier
in einen Korb aus Draht zu legen,
weiße, zerbrechliche Rundungen
baumelnd am dunklen Rand
eines schiefen Universums,
die das Licht sammeln
in sich selbst,
als wären sie
die hellen, dünnen Mauern des Glaubens.

aus dem Englischen von Uljana Wolf
...

All it would take
is one slammed door
to make the whole thing
fall. Once bottle hurled
against a wall,
to start the hammering
on the heart
and crack
the body's shell.
One sneeze, one cough,
one doubt.

All it would take
is one breath,
no more.
...

Es genügte schon
eine zugeschlagene Tür
und alles würde in sich
zusammenfallen. Eine Flasche,
gegen die Wand geworfen,
und das Herz
würde hämmern,
die Körperschale
zerbrechen.
Ein Niesen, ein Husten,
ein Zweifel.

Es genügte schon
ein Atemzug,
nicht mehr.

aus dem Englischen von Uljana Wolf
...